Ratings for HBO’s critically lambasted and controversial new series “The Idol,” which stars Lily Rose-Depp and Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye, have been a bit of a mixed bag for the premium cabler it seems.
The second episode, ‘Double Fantasy,’ brought in 800,000 viewers across HBO and Max on Sunday night. That’s a 12% dip from the 913,000 viewers who tuned in to last week’s series premiere according to Variety.
The figures represent a combination of Nielsen’s measurement of linear viewing on HBO’s cable channel as well as Warner Bros. Discovery’s own data regarding streams on Max.
The latter was reportedly ‘nearly even’ with that of the week before, suggesting the decrease in viewership mostly came from the cable side of the viewership.
To put that in perspective, the first episode’s viewership was just 232,000 viewers via HBO cable and 681,000 via a Max stream. If that Max streaming figure remained steady, then the HBO cable viewership would have almost halved to just 119,000 viewers.
Whilst that sounds bad, on streaming the series has seen improvements. Warner Bros. Discovery reports the first episode has now reached 3.6 million after one week of delayed viewing on Max.
That is outpacing the performances of both the first episodes of “Euphoria” (3.3 million) and “The White Lotus” (3 million) in their first full weeks of availability.
The series is also skewing younger, with Nielsen reporting that those streaming “The Idol” on Max are averaging around 21 years younger than those watching on HBO.
